Introduction

This is the Planning Quality Framework report for Council A030.
It tells the story of the performance of the council's Planning Service taking account of:

Facts; real-time data on planning applications.

Part 1 The Work Profile

Part 2 The Outcomes

Part 3 Potential Waste Work

Part 4 Fees, Resources and Investment

Part 5 Process

Opinion; what customers say about the planning service

[section tbc]

Practice: how the service is delivered and goes about negotiating the best developments and outcomes

[section tbc]

The report includes some bar charts, line graphs and boxplots (guide to box plots). In the line graphs your council is represented by the thicker coloured line and your 'trend' is the thick red line. The overall trend, the average trend of all your comparator group, is indicated by the thicker, darker grey background.

The report has individual sections which are useful but on their own don't tell the whole story. The real story emerges when different parts of the report are knitted together. For example, how many councils, in response to a performance culture based on speed and targets, have carried out expensive process reviews just to make quicker decisions, and fail to notice that they say yes more than their peers, create less waste and have happier customers? That is the essence of this report - a much more rounded story of what is happening and what direction things are heading in.

PART 1 - The Work Profile

This shows the volume of applications by type of development that your service handles, the fee income, and the trends in these measures over time.

1a Application counts

Purpose: Understanding the volume of applications for each type of development over submitted quarters

As a collective (all of the comparator group combined):

1b. Application Counts/ Fee Comparator

Purpose: To understand how your work and fee income compares with your peers.

This is the count and fee income of applications received, grouped by development type. This is an 18 month figure:

For review:

What is most of the work? For most councils it will be householder and minor applications.

Do the volumes look right? If not, could it be that data is missing? Check, in particular, that you and your peers are recording conditions in the same way.

Do your priorities, processes and practices reflect the variety / volume of the work? Could you standardise or streamline more of the routine work or allocate resources differently? Is project and improvement work targeted at the right things?

The same information as a table (averaged into a month). Note that there are two lines for each development type, one for the count and one for the fee:

dev

category

A030

A013

A032

A041

A042

A008

A045

advert

appcount

8

7

6

5

5

8

5

advert

avefee

133

102

135

133

128

128

129

cert

appcount

2

8

12

3

4

3

2

cert

avefee

265

198

123

111

113

247

315

condition

appcount

16

20

NA

10

NA

NA

NA

condition

avefee

90

71

NA

86

NA

NA

NA

heritage

appcount

2

2

2

2

2

2

1

heritage

avefee

0

22

0

0

0

6

618

householder

appcount

30

89

58

38

45

109

44

householder

avefee

152

143

149

147

140

125

162

majormajor

appcount

2

2

1

0

1

5

5

majormajor

avefee

26501

6922

20275

28005

9701

11002

11080

minor

appcount

29

30

28

26

22

54

30

minor

avefee

524

492

622

624

506

350

750

minormajor

appcount

4

2

4

3

2

9

1

minormajor

avefee

8003

5957

4972

9592

7112

3773

7320

NMA

appcount

4

0

1

3

1

NA

6

NMA

avefee

150

19

121

155

192

NA

135

prior

appcount

3

12

2

8

5

NA

13

prior

avefee

171

10

205

77

5

NA

39

use

appcount

4

6

9

9

8

13

9

use

avefee

413

316

346

366

351

313

559

notification

appcount

NA

7

0

NA

4

9

NA

notification

avefee

NA

106

168

NA

163

41

NA

For review:

Is your application and / or fee profile very different to your peers? Is this expected? Are they doing something differently? Are these the right councils to compare with?

Are your peers seeing more of a particular type of development than you? Again, is this what you'd expect? Is there something happening in other places you could learn from?

Do the applications / fees mix represent any risk? Does a large proportion of fees come from a small number of applications? Are you managing this risk appropriately ?

1c. Applications over time

Purpose: To understand how the counts of the various sorts of applications are changing over time.
This plot uses a sample set of 1000 applications so each council has the same count.

For review:

Is there a a rise or fall in the numbers of certain development types? Does this correspond with your fee profile? Have the changes to the permitted development regime had any affect?

Are there any surprises or new things happening? Is the 'market' moving in a particular way?

If there is a trend and it continues, how might this affect things? How will your fee profile change? Is your skills base going to need to change? Can you say anything about your fee profile over the next few quarters?

Have you 'geared up' or formed teams to do certain types of work? How might this affect things?

PART 2 - The Outcomes

This part of the report looks at how often applications are approved and refused.

2a. Approval Rates

Purpose: How often are you saying 'yes' to and how does that compare with other councils?

This is the same information broken out by development type. For every 1000 applications of all types that you decide, you refuse this many of each type:

type

A030

A013

A032

A041

A042

A008

A045

advert

6

0

2

7

3

2

2

cert

10

5

32

1

14

3

1

condition

9

0

0

0

0

0

0

heritage

1

1

1

3

0

0

0

householder

6

44

47

52

26

35

7

majormajor

2

0

0

0

4

0

4

minor

9

13

25

17

22

20

10

minormajor

2

0

2

1

0

1

0

NMA

2

0

0

0

0

0

3

prior

2

4

2

6

4

0

3

use

0

0

11

12

7

5

1

notification

0

0

0

0

2

1

0

For review:

What is the overall trend? Are you granting more permissions? How might these messages be relayed to stakeholders?

Do your approval and refusal rates differ significantly from your peers on a particular type of development? What might be happening elsewhere that you can learn from?

How does your refusal rate for different development types compare with your peers? Are any of your numbers significantly higher or lower than those in other councils, and if so, why might this be?

PART 3 - Potential waste work

This part of the report looks at how much work gets withdrawn and how much additional work results from the original application e.g discharge of conditions.

3a. Withdrawal Rates

Purpose: Rates of withdrawal are a 'waste' indicator. Where possible they should be reduced to near zero.

This is the same information broken out by development type. Figures represent a count of withdrawn applications from the sample set of 1000 applications.

type

A030

A013

A032

A041

A042

A008

A045

advert

3

4

0

1

2

3

4

cert

6

11

1

3

1

1

0

condition

9

1

0

0

0

0

0

heritage

1

1

0

4

1

1

0

householder

19

53

1

14

6

42

2

majormajor

1

0

0

0

2

0

5

minor

24

20

4

10

21

29

11

minormajor

5

1

0

2

1

3

1

NMA

1

4

0

2

0

0

1

prior

3

17

0

9

12

0

1

use

7

4

0

5

6

5

1

notification

0

4

0

0

2

2

0

For review:

What is the overall trend ? Are you trying anything to bring rates of withdrawal down? Is it working? Are there particular categories of development that suffer more?

What are withdrawn applications costing you?* For most category of applications, the fee does not cover the cost of processing them. A withdrawn application represents a cost for processing the application to the point it is withdrawn, and then there is the potential for a 'free go' (see Part 3 - non-heritage zero fee applications). Is there anything to be done?

How does your refusal rate for different development types compare with your peers? Are any of your numbers significantly higher or lower than those in other councils, and if so, why might this be?

Why are applications getting withdrawn? How many occur at the request of the council? What do your developer community think?

3c. Zero fee applications

Looking at the work involved in processing potentially avoidable zero fee applications (excluding heritage and tree applications that you have to process with no fee).Purpose: , Zero fee applications are another 'waste' indicator. Where you can do so you should be looking to reduce their numbers.

The first graph shows your zero fee trend over time in comparison with your peers.

The second graph shows the time cost in days to do applications without a fee. For every 1000 applications, you do this amount of work without a fee:

This is a table of the number of days spent doing work without a fee. This is not a total for the year - it is for your sample set of 1000 applications so an annual value will be different.

dev

A030

A013

A032

A041

A042

A008

A045

advert

1

1

1

2

4

3

0

cert

2

5

32

2

6

1

1

condition

6

5

0

9

0

0

0

householder

40

107

76

75

95

108

17

majormajor

12

12

116

0

12

0

116

minor

59

62

34

41

82

37

37

minormajor

19

7

47

0

39

110

0

NMA

1

3

0

1

0

0

2

prior

0

54

0

34

0

0

0

use

6

1

9

19

27

3

0

notification

0

3

0

0

17

43

0

For review:

Why are we receiving applications without a fee for non-heritage and tree applications? Zero fee applications can follow previous withdrawns. can we do anything to bring these numbers down?

How does your refusal rate for different development types compare with your peers? Are any of your numbers significantly higher or lower than those in other councils, and if so, why might this be?

PART 4 - Fees, resources and investment

This part of the report looks at the investment value that development proposals represent, and how well matched the resources (FTEs) are to the volumes of work.

Purpose: The following 3 plots follow the same form. These plots are organised by when the application is received (not determined).

4a. Fees received per quarter

For review:

How is the market behaving? You already know your income from fees. This plot shows you how your peers are faring so to help you understand whether changes may be part of a trend.

4b. Headcount estimate

This is still in test !

The 'FTE estimate' plot is based on PAS 2012 Benchmark data. From this we know the average amount of hours it takes the average council to process different types of application, for example, a householder application takes 9 hours.
The FTEs represented here include all planning staff involved in handling an application â€“ administrative, technical, planners. We take your applications counts, multiply that by the hours we know it takes to process an application, then derive a headcount of planning staff required to handle your current workload.

For review:

How does the FTE estimate compare to reality? What might account for any significant differences? You should compare notes with your peers and help refine our time allowances for each class of application (you can see the values we've used for your report at the end of the technical appendix)

What is the overall FTE trend? Does this correspond with the volumes of applications you are receiving (Section 1)?

What do these numbers tell you about the proper resourcing for your service? Are there opportunities to re-focus resources?

4c. Investment estimate over time

The 'Investment estimate' plot is based on the build costs for different types of development - these are just simplistic estimates for now and the plot is just here to illustrate the concept.
Estimated build costs means an estimate accepted by the local authority as being a reasonable amount that would be charged by a person in business to carry out such work (as per building control).

For review:

Development Investment - what are the significant messages? The investment value will represent a significant sum and will put a perspective on many decisions facing the service - each planning consent results in some form of inward investment.

What do the trends (rising, falling or stable) mean for your place? Is there any significance between this and fee income (e.g. considering future resources available)? Is there a significance regarding the FTE estimate, for example, are you resourced to handle a growing upward trend, or might you have to re-focus resources to account for a downward trend?

PART 5 - Process

This section of the report focuses on processing times - summarising how long the validation and determination of applications took.

5a. How much work is valid on day 1 ?

Purpose: Shows the proportion of applications received that can be worked on straight away.

For your sample set of 1000 cases there is a delay while the cases are all declared valid. (applications that were valid on receipt should have a zero delay) This has been divided by 7 to give a total weeks of delay:

type

A030

A013

A032

A041

A042

A008

A045

advert

75

68

31

60

89

45

57

cert

24

35

28

20

58

19

24

condition

112

50

0

100

0

0

0

heritage

34

4

12

15

12

9

21

householder

429

811

274

303

312

464

361

majormajor

27

8

4

2

87

43

68

minor

612

367

187

303

475

406

596

minormajor

131

3

34

55

57

57

13

NMA

26

0

5

3

12

0

7

prior

10

32

5

21

6

0

96

use

98

59

37

84

89

60

227

notification

0

37

1

0

21

30

0

For review:

The proportion of applications that are invalid. Anything above your line on the graph is the %age of applications that are invalid on receipt. This represents avoidable time and cost to make them valid.

How do you compare with your peers? Is there anything you could learn from those achieving a higher proportion of valid applications?

What is causing invalid applications. Don't assume that invalid applications are the sole fault of the applicant/agent. Consider whether your validation procedures, processes , consistency and customer guidance are as good as they could be.

What are your applicants and agents saying? Look over Customer Feedback Section XXXX, is there anything in there that could indicate what the problem with validation might be (e.g. poor guidance, inability to contact a member of staff for advice, inconsistent advice).

Are particularly catgories of applications more likely to be invalid than others? Might there be a need for some proactive work with applicants, or better on-line guidance.

5b. Days to make valid (+trend over time)

Purpose: Shows the number of days it takes for applications to be made valid. A box-plot displays a range of local_values (days here). If you can't see a line in the middle of the box plot then your median local_value is zero (that means that at least half of the applications received are made valid on the day they arrive which is good).

For review:

The boxes represent a range of days. The range is the lowest and highest number of days it can take for the majority of applications to be made valid.

Are the heights of the boxes inconsistent e.g. up and down? The more erratic the picture, the more inconsistent and uncertain the picture for the customer.

Do any of the quarters stand out as particularly different (better or worse)?

Are the heights of the boxes getting smaller over time (taking less time) or taller (taking longer)? Have you taken any action that might be causing this to happen?

This represents avoidable time and cost to the council and applicants. It doesn't affect National Indicator statistics (the clock starts ticking once the case has been made valid). BUT it all adds to the customer's wait for a decision.

5d. Days from declared Valid to Decision issued (+trend over time)

Purpose: Shows the number of days between applications being declared valid and a decision notice being issued.

For review: As previous box plot plus

Are the 8/13 week targets driving decision making times or do you driven by 'what is the ealiest I can issue the decision'? Narrow green/blue boxes clustered close to the 56 day mark are an indicator of target-driven decision making. A lower edge to the box indicates that decisions are issued early.

5e. Average days per type of development

Purpose: Shows the number of days between applications being received and a decision notice being issued.

dev

category

A030

A013

A032

A041

A042

A008

A045

advert

validation

6

14

5

10

7

11

9

advert

decision

53

65

55

52

41

60

58

cert

validation

7

8

2

7

7

9

6

cert

decision

55

58

43

46

29

45

60

condition

validation

4

3

NA

5

NA

NA

NA

condition

decision

86

105

NA

54

NA

NA

NA

heritage

validation

13

13

6

6

10

11

14

heritage

decision

87

86

57

68

50

79

85

householder

validation

10

9

4

4

5

6

6

householder

decision

55

63

55

54

39

51

54

majormajor

validation

14

10

5

0

20

10

9

majormajor

decision

120

136

121

112

84

108

120

minor

validation

13

13

6

9

14

11

12

minor

decision

72

85

70

79

55

78

66

minormajor

validation

18

16

6

10

11

9

13

minormajor

decision

106

154

81

141

89

125

98

NMA

validation

4

0

3

3

5

NA

2

NMA

decision

35

28

50

29

22

NA

27

prior

validation

1

6

2

5

1

NA

4

prior

decision

52

44

43

38

22

NA

39

use

validation

16

19

6

9

16

11

14

use

decision

62

96

64

63

49

72

65

notification

validation

NA

9

3

NA

3

2

NA

notification

decision

NA

41

34

NA

28

26

NA

Test

This section is under test.
If your group took an equal share of all the development, and carried on processing it in the same way, how long would you each take compared to the average ?
For every application we sum the difference between you and the mean for each category of development. Low is good.

And broken down by type of development:

For review:

How much difference is there between you and your peers ?

Are there particular categories that are worth looking at ?
Note that the largest cumulative differerences are for the most common applications.

End

This is a draft report for the Planning Quality Framework. It is version 0.8 last changed on 2015-04-19. It was generated on 2015-04-19.